Gov. Scott Walker approved updated rules Thursday for conduct at the Capitol in hopes of protecting rights to protest while trying to keep order in the building.
Walker signed off on a scope statement that updates emergency rules and keeps the decades-long permitting process that some protesters have argued is unconstitutional. At a news conference Thursday, Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, said the Walker administration’s Capitol rules have “got to stop.”
The Department of Administration oversees the Capitol Police and updated the emergency rules, which allow the rules to go into effect sooner than the normal process and do not indicate an emergency, according to DOA spokesperson Stephanie Marquis.
“It is not anticipated that the rule changes will have any new impact upon any person or group that follows the permit process,” Marquis said in an email to The Badger Herald. “To be clear, there are not any new enforcement measures.”
DOA will hold a public hearing on the rules this summer, she added.
Taylor said Capitol Police have issued more than 140 citations for people without permits. She said 68 of those have been dismissed and none have been successfully prosecuted on its merits, adding the Department of Justice “can’t stomach” going through with some cases.
“This is not only a complete waste of taxpayer money [but] it also, I believe, is designed to curtail speech here in the Capitol,” Taylor said.
Under the rule changes, people with signs that are 28 inches or smaller or those who are promoting a cause on their clothing do not need a permit. The new rules would also let DOA waive a requirement that people get a permit 72 hours in advance.
The new rules also state that anyone who “refuses to remove or correct” anything a DOA employee deems “hazardous” can be cited. Those materials include “displays, decorations, signs, banners or the like.”
Marquis emphasized courts have found the permitting process that has been in place since 1979 to be constitutional. Those rules, she said, are meant to “protect the safety of the building and the public.”
That reasoning was also included in the DOA’s reasoning for the scope statement, which said the 2011 protests at the Capitol cost DOA more than $7,400,000 in law enforcement.
“Groups of persons continue to occupy rooms in the Wisconsin State Capitol building without permits, including the Capitol rotunda,” the statement said. “These groups constitute an exception to the norm.”
The statement also said Wisconsin is not the only state that has a permitting process, with its neighboring Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa also having them.
Attorney Bob Jambois, who has represented some people who have been cited, described himself as a “pretty conservative guy.” But he said it was important to keep peoples’ rights to protest in the Capitol, especially given the Capitol’s tradition of free speech.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor Michael Kissick, who is the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin lawsuit against the permitting process, was also at the news conference.
Steve Porter, his attorney, said Madison’s U.S. District Court will hold a preliminary hearing on the case next Wednesday.
“It is our notion that the presumption should be in favor of free speech,” Porter said. “The presumption should not be in favor of bureaucratic permits or the government giving us permission.”
